All the money goes to the Opportunity Finance Network, an umbrella group of 180 Community Development Financial Institutions, which specialize in making loans to small businesses. Starbucks seeded the effort with a $5 million donation.

Studies suggest that new businesses in particular are the ones most likely to generate jobs.

(Parenthetically, another company that started small and grew big, the Boston Beer Company, which makes Samuel Adams beer, has offered a small business mentorship and financing effort called Brewing the American Dream since June 2008).

Since all this has been well-covered elsewhere in great depth, I want to describe the exemplary way the transaction took place when I bought mine late 2011 at a nearby Starbucks.

The wristbands at my Starbucks were displayed on a shelf below the cash register. The barrista was super friendly. She took my order and I told her that I wanted to buy the bracelet.

“Oh, that’s so great! This is such a great idea,” she said as she reached for the wristband.

“Do you know what it’s all about?," she asked.

I did, but I let her go on.

“We’re working to help the economy recover and put people back to work.” And with that she reached and grabbed for the explanatory brochure at the left.

I didn’t open it then. But inside the brochure is an infographic worthy of an Al Gore presentation.

I handed her my credit card and she said, “Thanks for doing this.”

She was so unrelentingly cheerful and good-humored that I really felt thanked.

Plainly she had been trained well enough to understand and explain the effort as well as get behind it. It won’t be that way with every barrista at every Starbucks. But it was with this Starbucks and this barrista.

And that, my friends, is how a cause marketed paper icon or a premium items like a stuffed animal or even a wristband ought to be sold.

Labels

Comments

Michael Liebowitz said…

Thanks for writing about this. I ran out to my local Starbucks (being in NYC, there were plenty of choices) and bought a bracelet. While I didn't have the experience you described, I was impressed by the explanatory material available. But I was wondering what Starbucks is doing to promote this. Perhaps in-store signage is enough, considering the amount of traffic Starbucks gets. However, I'm not a regular Starbucks drinker. The only way I knew about this program was through various Cause Marketing websites. Do you think they should being doing more to get the word out there?

Also, I was wondering if you knew how the program was going since it launched.

Nice article!As a regular Starbucks customer, I heard about the wristband through an email promotion. I headed to the nearest store on the date the bracelets went on sale and experienced a similar enthusiastic response from the barista. It would be nice if the company posted updates at the stores - especially near the bracelet display. Even something as simple as "$X million raised so far - That's aroudn XXX new jobs!" would be informative and keep up the momentum.

Popular posts from this blog

I’ve spent a big chunk of my career working with or for charities.
Many of my dearest and ablest friends are in the charity ‘space.’ And the
creativity and problem-solving coming out of the nonprofit sector has never
been greater. Although I’ve had numerous nonprofit clients over the last decade
or so, I haven’t worked in a charity for about 12 years now, which gives me a
certain distance. Distance lends perspective and consequently, I get a lot of
people asking me which charities I recommend for donations of money or time. My usual answer is, “it depends.” “On what?” they respond. “On what you want from your charitable activities,” I reply. It sounds like a weaselly consultant kind of an answer, but bear
with me for a moment. The English word charity comes from the Latin word caritas and means “from the heart,”
implying a voluntary act. Caritas is the same root word for cherish. The Jews come at charity from a different direction. The Hebrew
word that is usually rendered as charity is t…

More cause-related marketing campaigns are unveiled every day across the world than I review in a year at the cause-related marketing blog. And, frankly, I don’t see very many campaigns from outside North America. So I won’t pretend that my annual list of the top cause-related marketing campaigns is exhaustive.

But, like any other self-respecting blogger, I won’t let my superficial purview stop me from drawing my own tortured conclusions!

So… cue the drumroll (and the dismissive snickers)… without further ado, here is my list of the eight best cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007.

My list of the worst cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007 follows on Thursday.

Chilis and St. Jude Children’s Research HospitalI was delighted by the scope of Chilis’ campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. As you walked in you saw the servers adorned in black co-branded shirts. Other elements included message points on the Chilis beverage coas…

Last Monday, July 22, 2013, March of Dimes released the annual results of its campaign with Kmart... now in its thirtieth year... and thereby begged the question, what does it takes to have a multi-decade cause marketing relationship between a cause and a sponsor?

In the most recent year, Kmart,the discount retailer, donated $7.4 million to the March of Dimes, bringing the 30-year total to nearly $114 million. March of Dimes works to improve the health of mothers and babies.

Too many cause marketing relationships, in my estimation, resemble speed-dating more than long-term marriage. There can be good reasons for short-term cause marketing relationships. But most causes and sponsors benefit more from long-term marriages than short-term hookups, the main benefit being continuity. Cause marketing trades on the trust that people, usually consumers, put in the cause and the sponsor. The longer the relationship lasts the more trust is evidenced.